ssl_path is a path where I installed openssl 0.9.8k that I built myself. I
(tried to) only build a static version of openssl, which is to say when I
built it, I passed no-shared to the config script.

I was able to fix the configure test with this patch:

Index: configure.ac
===================================================================
--- configure.ac (revision 85)
+++ configure.ac (working copy)
@@ -1229,7 +1229,7 @@
dnl This is only reasonable to do if crypto actually is there: check
for
dnl SSL libs NOTE: it is important to do this AFTER the crypto lib